Product Description

BX-02 is inscribed within the 16th Congressional District, known for housing the largest amount of people in the USA living below federal poverty guidelines, currently set at $24,300 in earnings per year for a family of four. In this Congressional District, more than 250,000 people live in poverty, half of them children, most of them not able to eat properly more than twice a day. Fenced off, side to side with the poorest citizens of NYC, sits one of the largest food distribution centers in the world, the privately managed Hunts Point Cooperative Market, operating in gated facility of 46 hectares (113 acres), and generating annual profits of over $2.3 billion.

Nowhere in NYC is extreme social inequality more spatialized. Those who cannot eat live directly in front of the supply for the restaurants and supermarkets that feed those who can afford to eat. If any city aims to rethink its icons, it should do so by rendering visible the hidden urban conditions that make it worse for its citizens to live. Icons should stimulate a citizen’s consciousness, so that we turn our focus toward changing the conditions that oppress us. The 20th century emphasis on glamorous icons that envelop the successes of the richest 1% must be gradually replaced by those icons that represent the everyday struggles of the many. This is one proposal.